A community network may correspond to a social structure made of nodes which may include individuals and/or organizations, and links between the nodes. The links may correspond to varying degrees of social familiarity, from those of casual acquaintances to close familial bonds. Community networks may be tracked and/or maintained on web-based applications, enabling friends, business partners, and/or other individuals to connect with one another using a variety of tools. Additionally, formation of the community networks on the web-based applications may allow parties to connect with one another regardless of geographic proximity.
In online community networks, users may create profiles that include information such as a name, address, contact information, picture, and/or other personal information. For example, a friend-based community network may allow the users to upload photos to their profiles, while a business community network may allow the users to include work experience, education, and/or references on their profiles. Online community networks may further allow the profiles to be edited by other users. For example, the users may be allowed to leave comments, testimonials, and/or recommendations on other users' profiles and/or associate other users with uploaded pictures, videos, and/or other media.
Connections or links, may be made between users in an online community network. For example, two users on the friend-based community network may become “friends” if both the users approve the connection. Similarly, a business connection may be made on the business community network if two users have worked together and/or are interested in collaborating on a future work. Connections, or links, between the users form the basis of the online community networks and community network theory in general.
As with other communities, the community networks may include individuals with great influence in a particular area, neighborhood, and/or demographic. These individuals may include leaders, contributors, and/or other well-connected people. In addition, individuals with great influence in a particular neighborhood may facilitate transmission of messages between users of the community network as well as set trends, create groups and/or events, and/or otherwise shape the behavior of the other users of the community network. However, there may be inefficiencies in recognizing and/or granting privileges to the influencers by the community which may cause considerable setback to the online communities. As a result, the online communities may suffer due to a lack of recognition and/or granting of privileges to individuals of influence.